Definition
A procedural term from old English practice, literally meaning "a single taxation." Unica taxatio describes the mechanism — and the formal language on the record — by which a single jury assessment of damages was directed to cover multiple defendants in the same action who stood in different procedural postures: one having pleaded and raised a triable issue, and one or more others having allowed judgment to go by default or having submitted a demurrer. Because it would be inefficient and potentially inconsistent to empanel separate juries to assess damages separately, the court directed a single venire (jury panel) to assess damages against all defendants at once. The term names both the concept (single assessment) and the specific Latin phrase that appeared in the formal record to authorize it.
The language of the record ran to the effect that "because it is convenient and necessary that there be but one taxation in the suit" — unica taxatio — the jury summoned to try the contested issue would also assess the damages owed by the defaulting defendant. The phrase is now entirely obsolete as operative court language.
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Common Confusion
Unica taxatio is sometimes loosely read as if it concerns taxation in the modern fiscal sense. It does not. "Taxatio" here is the Latin legal term for the assessment or fixing of an amount — specifically, the jury's act of quantifying damages — not any governmental levy on income, property, or transactions. This confusion is unlikely in context but worth flagging for researchers encountering the term in Latin-form pleadings or old English records.
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Why It Matters in Research
This term is a marker of pre-modern common law pleading practice and will appear almost exclusively in pre-nineteenth-century English records, Latin-form plea rolls, and treatises on common law procedure from the era when court records were kept in Latin. Researchers encountering it should recognize several things:
First, unica taxatio signals a mixed-defendant situation: the action involves at least one contested issue going to the jury and at least one defendant in default or on demurrer. Finding this phrase in a record is itself a clue to the procedural history of the case — it tells you the litigation was not unified in its posture.
Second, the term is directly connected to the mechanics of the venire and the writ of inquiry. In cases where all defendants defaulted, a writ of inquiry (rather than a jury trial on the merits) would issue to assess damages. Unica taxatio arose precisely in the hybrid situation where both a trial and a damage assessment were needed simultaneously, and the record language authorized the jury to perform both functions under a single empanelment.
Third, because the term appears in Latin-form records, researchers working with early modern plea rolls, Year Books, or Chancery records may encounter it in abbreviated or contracted Latin. Burrill's is the most useful source for understanding the full record formula, as it actually quotes the operative language.
Fourth, this term has no meaningful life in American practice. It reflects the Latin-record era of English common law, which American courts shed fairly quickly after independence. Rapalje & Lawrence's inclusion of it alongside modern uniform-taxation cases is a juxtaposition of historical legal Latin with entirely unrelated American constitutional doctrine — do not conflate them.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All four sources agree on the core substance: unica taxatio names the award of a venire in a case where damages must be assessed against a defaulting defendant at the same time a jury tries a contested issue against another defendant. Black's (both editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence reproduce nearly identical language attributed to Wharton, treating it primarily as a curiosity of obsolete pleading vocabulary. Neither Black's edition adds anything beyond that characterization.
Burrill's is the most substantively useful of the four. It supplies the Latin derivation, situates the term within "old practice," and — critically — quotes the actual formula language from the record, explaining that the jury was directed to assess damages "at the same time" as trying the issue. This quotation reveals the procedural logic: efficiency and consistency of assessment drove the rule, not any abstract principle of joint liability.
What the historical sources collectively underemphasize: the term is not merely a label for a procedural outcome but was the specific Latin phrase that had to appear on the record to authorize the combined jury function. Its presence or absence in the record would have had procedural consequences. The sources treat it as a definition problem rather than a records problem, which somewhat understates its importance for archival researchers.
None of the sources situate unica taxatio within the broader history of the abolition of Latin pleading in England (accomplished by statute in the eighteenth century), which is the reason the term became obsolete. That context matters for dating documents: if you see unica taxatio in its original Latin-record form, the document almost certainly predates 1733 in England.
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Jurisdictional Note
Unica taxatio is a term of English common law practice and has no recognized role in American procedure. It predates the procedural reforms — in both England and the United States — that eliminated Latin-form records and restructured the assessment of damages in multi-defendant actions. Researchers encountering it in American sources will find it only in historical dictionaries or in treatises discussing inherited English procedure.
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